Tiffany Aching is minding her own business when a teenage witch appears in her dairy shed. Usually this sort of thing only happens to wizards, but this 'Hermione' needs some counseling and a lesson in what witchcraft really is about. PostWintersmith.

Tiffany had her own
cottage now, with a dairy shed. Even though people were happy to give
her cheeses, she still enjoyed making her own, especially with one of
them mumbling around her feet. Harold seemed to be in a good mood,
inasmuch as a sentient blue cheese can have a mood. The Feegles were
spying unobtrusively, and she had plenty of firewood for tonight's
snowstorm. All was well on the Disc –

THUD. "Ahh!"

Spinning around,
Tiffany saw a girl slightly older than she was huddled against the
corner, where no one had been before. Odd, things like that usually
happened up in the Ramtops, not here. She rushed over to her side.

The girl wore some kind
of black robe, with long, frizzy brown hair. The girl, not the robe.
Everything appeared covered in blood, mud, and sweat, like she had
been through a forest of thorns amidst rain. Her face was so drawn,
it could have been something done by Leonard da Quirm in his anatomy
sketches.

"It would be silly to
ask you if you are all right, because in my experience sudden
apparitions are not all right, but how may I help you?" Tiffany
knelt by her and felt her forehead, which burned to the touch.

"Idiot…mispronouncing
spells…broken wand…Ron's fault…Mother! Father!" With such
mutterings accomplished, the girl opened her eyes a fraction.
"Where?"

"This is the Chalk. I
am the witch of the Chalk Downs." Tiffany said this with an element
of pride, since no witch before her would have dared to say so
openly. "Considering that you're speaking in disconnected
phrases, I would guess that you're disoriented."

The girl simply
groaned.

"Tell me where it
hurts." The girl made no reply, so Tiffany clenched her teeth and
entered her mind. How very strange! She read something about a
battle, and people using wands for magic as if they were fairy
godmothers, and torture. When Tiffany emerged, she saw no marks on
the girl and no breaks in the skin. What kind of physical torment
left no signs?

She took the girl's
pain and made it into a little ball, placing in her pocket, just as
Granny Weatherwax taught her. Instantly, the girl's eyes opened
again, and she sat up. "What happened?" she asked.

"First things first.
What's your name? Are you hungry? If you're in need of highly
nourishing yogurt, I have that available."

"Hermione Granger.
Where am I?" Hermione's gaze took in the stacks of wrapped
cheeses, the churn, and the window. "I think there's a little
blue man looking at us, but I might be hallucinating."

"Oh, them." Tiffany
looked over her shoulder, and put her hands on her hips. "Is it
Daft Wullie or No'-as-big-as-Medium-Jock-but-bigger-than-Wee-Jock
Jock? I know you're watching me on rotation."

"Ach, no, it be the
hands on the hips! And the pursin' o' the lips!" The speaker
had enough heavy Glaswegian accent for several full-grown humans.

"It'll be the
'tappin' o' the feets' if you don't show yourselves,"
Tifanny threatened.

"That's what this
stick was? It doesn't look like a wand. It doesn't have a star or
mystic runes or anything. Feegles, I'm waiting!" Tiffany handed
her the wand that had rolled across the floor.

A tiny blue blur
scooted over and tugged on the edge of Tiffany's skirt. "It's
me, hag." Rob Anybody stopped picking his teeth and removed some
grass from his beard, which for a Feegle was extremely formal and
courtly. "Who's this bigjob? Is she a hag, belikes?"

"She says she is.
Listen, I know you're in contact with the Long Lake Clan."

"Ah, them's those
with t'verra comp-li-cated documents. I can read them noo, at least
the farst sentence. I been practicin'." Rob Anybody waited for
applause.

"I appreciate it,"
Tiffany said. "Could you tell the Long Lake Clan to tell Granny
Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg that a new witch has appeared, and I may
need to see them about it?"

"We'll do it
oursel's. Nothin's too good for our former kelda."

"Thanks. You may take
one of Mr. Niles' sheep, and I will answer for it. One of his sheep
had triplets last year, and I had to untangle all of them, and he
didn't give me anything in exchange."

"The Nac Mac Feegle
are all right when you understand them. Let's leave the shed and go
into my cottage, and we can sort things out. Don't put your hand in
your pocket, because it will be unpleasant if you do."

Her cottage pleased
Tiffany. Roland wanted to build her one made of stone, at the very
least, but she said she wouldn't have one until ever other person
on the Chalk had one, too. It only had one room, but that room had
her paintings on the wall, a rocking chair, and ordinary chair, a
cozy fireplace, some pots and pans for cooking, and even a few books
beside her little bed.

Hermione must not have
seen it that way, because she said, "I'm sorry to impose
anything. I understand if you can't spare much."

"I'm a witch. It's
my job to help people. Would you prefer the rocker or the standing
chair?"

"Standing, please. I
feel sort of sick. Where am I again?" Hermione rubbed her temples.

"I told you, you're
on the Chalk. Where were you before?" Tiffany brought out the
kettle and set it over the fire to brew. She knew Margrat Garlick
used to make all the tea for Granny and Nanny, which seemed funny
when she thought of her as the Queen of Lancre now. Queen Magrat was
sending her letters about how to make the transition from witch to
royalty, though Tiffany thought if Roland didn't want her to stay a
witch, he could go back to the Underworld.

"Where is the Chalk?"

"Hubward and downhill
of the Ramtops, on the Continent, widdershins of Ankh-Morpork. It's
all sheep around here, along with the Nac Mac Feegle. Where were you,
again?"

Hermione hugged
herself, and her voice shook. "This is all gibberish to me. I was
in England."

"I know the geography
of the Disc, and there is no land of Eng, unless it's on the
continent of XXXX, which nobody knows about except the people there."

"Great. Just great."
Her words came in liquid spurts now. "Ron and I were fighting the
Death Eaters. They killed my parents, and they were going to kill me,
and I meant to do a nonverbal spell, but I couldn't think about
anything except how I wanted to be anywhere but there, and I must
have Disapparated wrong."

"The spell did work,"
Tiffany pointed out, puzzling over the new word, which Dr.
Sensibility Bustle failed to translate for her. He must have not
known it either. "You weren't specific enough. That always
happens if you're not specific enough. What were your exact
thoughts? Care for some tea? It's a cold afternoon."

Hermione nodded. "I
haven't eaten anything for a while. My thoughts were 'I need to
be in a better place. The world is torn up by this war, and I can't
take it anymore.'"

"This is about as
peaceful as anywhere gets." Tiffany handed her a chipped mug. "We
only fear the weather. Nobody wants to steal from us, because all we
have is sheep."

"I'm not very good
at making it. I make cheeses well, though. Speaking of cheeses…"
Tiffany heard a knocking sound at the door and opened it. "Harold!
Aren't you with the Feegles now?"

"Hnr hnr hnr," said
Harold, crouching in his bit of tartan cloth.

"Well, all right.
Don't come too near the fire, or you'll be melted sentient
cheese, which would be a terrible thing, and very confusing."
Tiffany let him in and came back to Hermione. "A lot of witches
have another job, too, and I'm a dairymaid. One day my jobs got
mixed, and I ended up with Harold."

"It's alive,"
Hermione pointed out.

"He is. I think of
Harold as a 'he'. I'm sorry about your parents. It must feel
terrible to not be there to sit up with their bodies."

"What?"

"You don't have
that tradition? That's one of the witches' duties here, to watch
over the dying and lay out the dead."

"You mean you let
everybody know you're a witch?"

"Everybody needs
witches. In the cities you have doctors, midwives, veterinarians,
lawyers, therapists, and judges, but here you need witches."

Hermione pondered this.
"Where I come from, we don't let people who don't have magic
know about the people who do."

"If they would kill
you for it, that makes sense." Tiffany sat down with her mug of tea
and Harold jumped into her lap, still making 'hnr hnr' noises.

"They wouldn't
believe it, and if they did, they'd be bothering us all the time."